By the time Matt Helm emerged, 4 bond films had been released. Just long enough for greedy Hollywood to try to cash in on someone else's success formula. I viewed 3 of the 4 Helm movies and it became obvious that they saw the Bond films and said "Lets do everything different than Bond." Maybe they had to execute them differently due to copyright or plagiarism, I don't know. But even had they emulated the Bond formulas more closely, Albert Broccoli would still be laughing and certainly not threatened. But that laughter would come out of ridicule and not from any on-screen humor. Helm, played by Dean Martin is so laid back he appears to be in a stupor. He couldn't move fast if a sloth was chasing him. He, like Bond, is a misogynistic boozer who is licensed to kill, but only those words exemplify any actual resemblance. Martin, who is nearly 50 in the first 2 installments and over 50 in the 2nd two, drives a wood paneled station wagon, chain smokes, and drinks while driving. He has to be coaxed into performing any act of duty as he is constantly resisting work. Of course he beds just about any woman he meets, which is sort of creepy because some of them are half his age, if that. I will say, the Helm women equal the Bond women in looks, but not sex appeal, as they are written as 1-dimensional excuses to be a prop for fashion designers.On the topic of fashion, Helm's look is a turtleneck under a blazer. His "day job" seems to be a fashion photographer and he spends more time fantasizing and singing about them then shooting them. The songs are crooner-corny, the jokes are stupid. But the stupidity does not stop there. The scripts are so vapid they could almost be improvised. The three movies I saw plodded along at a snails pace, poorly edited, terrible continuity, and repeated variations on the same scenery. The villains had little evil about them, and apparently spent much of their time performing the dirty duties their lackey's should have. Admittedly I only continued to watch these films for the babes, but they were so plastic and un-sexy, that even that quickly became boring for me. By comparison, the Flint movies were more entertaining. Don't get me wrong, I wasn't approaching this with too much serious enthusiasm at the onset. Dean Martin cannot act, and I knew he would play the rat-pack cool-card to the hilt. I also understand parody and kitsch. But these films were not intelligent enough on any level to deliver. The 1st two films end with Helm sliding into his indoor pool/tub from a robotic bed, with a girl at his side, I can only assume the next two did the same. My question is: why couldn't they have placed the film canisters and scripts along with them?
Review of The Silencers
